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“Also, I thought people with the ability to teleport instantly across dozens or hundreds of feet of space in mid-sentence were only in terrifying sci-fi thrillers!”

Lu Ann’s shocking discovery that not all porch swings were ritually burned by squads of fanatics in the Great Outdoor Seating Purge of ’68 might make some sort of sense if she were a Manhattan native, since the closest such a person would get to a porch swing would be a wobbly folding chair left out on the fire escape in violation of building safety codes. But since she’s actually from South Dakota, a state I assume to be lousy with porched houses, I find her surprise puzzling. Maybe it’s like when you hide a baby’s toy under a blanket and the baby thinks that it no longer exists? “I haven’t seen a porch swing in months, I assumed they got rid of all of them!”

Funky Winkerbean, 9/3/11

“It also looks like I got engaged to someone without ever asking anything about her parents! I suppose I probably should have tried to find out more about you instead of blathering about my book and my dead wife and my book about my dead wife, constantly.”